Writing for the Washington Times this week, the director of National Legal and Policy Center’s Corporate Integrity Project, Paul Chesser, previews the shareholder resolutions we have scheduled for next year’s annual meetings at several multinational corporations. The focus: transparency about the companies’ risks in their extensive business with, and in, China.
From the op-ed:
Apple Inc., for example, is finally learning that the concentration of manufacturing of its technology products in a few Chinese factories is unhealthy for the bottom line. Delivery of some iPhone models during the holiday shopping season was delayed due to [Xi Jinping]’s oppressive “zero COVID-19” lockdown policies and resultant protests, leaving key factories understaffed and less than optimized. CEO Tim Cook scrambled to move some production to other countries, including India and Vietnam…
Mismanagement and blind spots in the face of evil, as exhibited by Mr. Cook and executives like him, can be costly for their companies’ customers, employees, vendors and shareholders. Apple is not the only American corporation with significant exposure to risk in China…
For the upcoming annual corporate meetings in spring 2023 — known as “proxy season” — we will sponsor proposals for each company, asking executive leaders to research and publish a “Communist China Risk Audit” report, which is to annually inform “shareholders on the nature and extent to which corporate operations depend on, and are vulnerable to, Communist China.”
Read the full commentary at the Washington Times.
